The Biden administration released wide-ranging limits on the exports of chips and chip-making technology to China; it is a position that makes logical sense, even as it makes the status quo more fragile.
Ben Thompson
An Interview With Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman about the Democratization of AI
An interview with Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman about the decentralization of AI, the story of GitHub CoPilot, where Stable Diffusion came from, and why software will finally become truly deflationary.
Musk Re-Commits to Twitter; Meta, AITemplate, and Nvidia; Facebook Shutters Bulletin
Notes on Musk’s latest Twitter about-face, then Meta open-sources an AI library that is a big threat to Nvidia. Plus, another example of a failed paid product from an ad-supported company.
DALL-E Open to All, OpenAI and Openness, OpenAI Opportunities and Threats
OpenAI opened up DALL-E 2 to everyone; the biggest driver was probably competition from open alternatives, .which highlight the extent to which OpenAI’s promises of openness have always been relative.
Google Kills Stadia; Why Stadia Was a Bad Product; Microsoft, Activision, and Antitrust
Google Stadia is, predictably, dead: the company never had the business model to match. Microsoft is showing just how hard it is to get that business model off of the ground.
An Interview With Instacart CEO Fidji Simo About Big Ambitions
An interview with Instacart CEO Fidji Simo about Instacart and why she believes it is a generational company.
Spotify Audiobooks, Audiobook Business Models, Limitations and Skepticism
Spotify is now selling audio books, but with an analog business model that is further hampered by Apple. The limitations aren’t Spotify’s fault, but do limit upside.
Roblox Ads, Walmart Land, Internal Economies
Roblox announced an advertising platform; I’m skeptical about the value to brand advertisers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be valuable to Roblox itself.
Nvidia In the Valley
Nvidia is in the valley in terms of gaming, the data center, and the omniverse; if it makes it to future heights its margins will be well-earned.
An Interview With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang About Building the Omniverse Cloud
An interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about his GTC keynote, the Ada Lovelace GPU, the companies shift into cloud services, its challenging last few quarters, President Biden’s China ban, and more.